


Second chances

by smkkbert



Series: Old days, new hope [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4165980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smkkbert/pseuds/smkkbert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fearing she’s lost Oliver forever, Felicity inadvertently travels back in time to before the Gambit sank. Can she help Oliver avoid five years in hell, and maybe save some lives along the way? She’d often wished she could take away Oliver’s suffering, but will saving him prevent him from becoming the man she loves?</p><p>What’s more: will he still love her?</p><p>(Text of the Tumblr-prompt this is inspired by)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Oliver was lost. Her Oliver was lost. Once and for all.

When she had seen the canister hit the floor and explode, Felicity hadn’t wondered anymore if perhaps she really had lost Oliver. She had known she had. She’d told Digg and everyone else that their Oliver was gone – that he really was Al Sah-Him now – but she hadn’t truly believed it until she had watched him walk away after sealing his friends in a cage with a deadly virus.

“I’m sorry, Felicity. For everything” she heard John whisper.

“You don’t have to be sorry for anything, John” she said back, her eyes becoming tired. “I’m glad to have known you.”

As her head became heavier she laid it down to Digg’s shoulder. It didn’t take long though till all tension left her body and her body sank down, her head ending up on her friend’s thighs.

Despite the circumstances that had made her end up here, it was still Oliver’s face she saw as she drifted into unconsciousness. It was still his arms she felt around her as her body became numb. She’d give anything in order to go back to the beginning and have another chance with her Oliver.

She sucked in a deep breath, trying to revel in the memory of that one night she had had with him. She imagined the feel of his lips on hers, his body pressed close to hers. She could almost smell the scent of him in her nose and almost taste his skin on her lips as much as she could hear the low moans he was given in her ears.

She felt as if she was falling like when your body became numb right before falling asleep. And just like those time she winced, her body regaining self-control. She inhaled and frowned surprised when she realized that she wasn’t coughing anymore like the virus had made her just seconds before. The tiredness she had felt seconds before suddenly gone.

Was she in heaven or wherever else the souls of dead ones went?

She felt her eyes open almost like on own accord and she didn’t need long to be convinced that wherever she was it wasn’t heaven.

It took a while to orientate herself which might be partially due to the fact that she hadn’t expectedto wake up at all. She had always assumed that dying was exactly like falling asleep and that there was no consciousness anymore. She certainly hadn’t imagined to wake up again.

She needed three attempts before she finally got her body to move. It felt sore, almost like she was having a muscle ache. When she finally managed to sit up, she realized that she was no longer huddled on the floor of a dark cell in Nanda Parbat. Instead, she was curled up on that damn lumpy mattress she had gotten rid of more than seven years earlier, in the middle of her first apartment in Starling City, surrounded by several packing cases that were put everywhere without any obvious system.

“What the frack?” she whispered to herself.

She must have lost her mind. Or at least her actual consciousness. Maybe the virus was making her hallucinate. At least that could explain why all of this felt so real and why she could smell the fresh paint on the walls as well as the stinging smell of the packing cases although she knew that she wasn’t really in that apartment in Starling. She couldn’t be.

She took a look around the room, finding everything exactly the way it had been all those years ago. Most of the boxes were still unpacked, just the most necessary things had been put into place. The old coffee machine was placed on the kitchen counter, her old laptop lay next to the mattress that was put on the floor and a mirror was hung up on one of the walls.

Felicity could feel her heartbeat stopping as she caught her reflection in the mirror above her old dresser and saw what she assumed was her 19 year old self staring back at her. Her hair was longer than when she had been lying on the cold ground of Nanda Parbat expecting to die. Her face seemed younger, less adult and maybe a little less experienced, but she still recognized herself in it. Her eyes seemed to be not as bad as they had been lately, missing seven years of work at displays.

“What the frack?” she repeated, automatically framing her face with her hands just to make sure this isn’t some…

Well, what could it be? Other than crazy of course?

She had been lying on the floor of Nanda Parbat and-

Or had all of that been a dream? Had she been dreaming a life in which she was helping the city’s own personal hero, falling in love with him and dying by his actions?

Felicity pinched herself, not exactly knowing if she wanted to make sure this was a dream or everything else had been. As the stinging pain ran through her body she still wasn’t certain what this was, but she definitely knew that her work with Team Arrow and-

Team Arrow, she thought, looking around to try and find her friends, but of course didn’t find them. Her hands weren’t chained to the floor, she wasn’t in Nanda Parbat and her friends weren’t there.

Hastily she searched for her phone, finding an old one she hadn’t been using in years, but scrolled through her contacts to call her friends anyway which was kind of crazy because nobody had had their mobile with them, but neither had she and now here she was in her old apartment in Starling, a mobile she hadn’t seen for years in her hand.

It didn’t take her long till she realized that the contacts of all her friends were missing. Three of the seven contacts she had saved were from restaurants she couldn’t remember. One contact was her Mum and two other college friends she hadn’t called since graduation.

Of course her friends’ numbers weren’t saved in a mobile she had stopped using years before she had met them. Question was what that mobile was doing here anyway. And what was she doing here? And why was she looking like the last seven years hadn’t happened.

What the frack was going on here, she wondered taking another look around.

Everything was exactly like she remembered it from seven years ago, right after she had moved to Starling City and into this apartment. The grey kitchen counters had their best times behind them and still were slightly dirty from whoever had lived here before her. She could even see the ugly stains on the cheap linoleum floor that she was going to cover with a brightly colored carpet.

Again she caught her reflection in the mirror.

A creepy assumption built in her thoughts and Felicity had to take deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating while she lifted her mobile from where she had put it on her thigh and opened the calendar, looking up the date.

She heard herself gasp as her phone told her that he date was 15th of June 2008.

“What the frack” she repeated once more, hurrying to get up from her mattress that was set up on the floor probably because she hadn’t had a bed back in 2008.

Back in 2008, she repeated quietly. It wasn’t 2008. It was 2015 and-

Felicity shook her head. She couldn’t think about this any longer. She needed facts and that meant more facts than what her old mobile was telling her. So Felicity almost ran towards the door, not caring that she was only wearing a short pink pajama. She grabbed her purse and her key, hurried down the three floors of stairs and ran to the small kiosk to buy a newspaper, ignoring the expression in the vendor’s eyes regarding her barely there clothes.

“What the frack!” she almost screamed, reading the same date her phone had showed her again.

“I’m sorry, but is this one of today’s newspapers?” Felicity asked, just to make sure.

“Sure. We don’t sell yesterday’s newspapers” the vendor said, eying her up like she was crazy before busying himself with putting products into the shelves around him.

Today’s newspaper? It couldn’t be. It was impossible! People didn’t just travel back in time. Unless they were Barry and could actually mess with the timeline like some magical… something that really could do that.

But normal people like her? No, normal people like her didn’t travel back almost ten years in time to the day of their most important job interview, especially when they had gotten the job and didn’t need a second chance for that.

Felicity stood still in the middle of the stairs. If she was really reliving this day, wasn’t she supposed to do everything exactly the she had done it the first time if she didn’t want to mess everything she had done up? One wrong move and she might end up somewhere different.

Not that she was exactly begging to die at the ground of Nanda Parbat, but most of the things before that hadn’t been that bad.

This was crazy! How could any about this be real? Was it real? And if it was, then how did it happen and most importantly what was she going to do then?

Nervously she strolled upstairs to her apartment, opening the door and starting to walk up and down in her small home.

So what was she going to do?

Sighing Felicity came to a stop and let her chin sink to her chest. What if she was actually finding a way back which she sure as hell wanted to do and any of the things she did or didn’t do that she had done when she had lived through this time for the first time had an influence on her life? What if this was some kind of time travel where she might change everything?

Biting down on her lower lip Felicity closed her eyes, trying to think clearly.

On one hand she still couldn’t believe that any of this was true so why bother?  
On the other hand there had been so many things she had never been able to imagine that had happened like Barry getting hit by lightning and gaining super-speed that she really didn’t want to risk messing up everything she had been building all those last years just because she hadn’t been careful enough to actually consider that this might be one more of those creepy things that nobody believed really happened until it finally did.

Sucking in a deep breath Felicity went to the bathroom, already taking off her pajama. Of course her 19 year old self had hung out the clothes she had decided to wear. Luckily Felicity should add because she couldn’t have quiet remembered what she had worn and she should try to repeat as much of her original actions as she could.

As she got ready for her job interview Felicity made up a plan for what she had to do as long as she was in this world.

First she was going to get that job interview done. It was the one important, life changing thing that she had done at this time. After that it was going to take one week until the head of Human Resources called and told her she had gotten the job and after that it was going to take three more weeks until she had to start working.

That left enough time for her to figure out what the hell was going on here, why she was here and what she had to do to go back hopefully without messing up some mayor events.

With a last glance into her mirror she grabbed her purse and left the apartment.

She still had one hour before she had to be at QC which at least gave her enough time to go to that coffee shop she had missed so much since it had been closed in 2013. It had been the only store where it had seemed like they had understood the meaning of extra strong coffee. She didn’t really remember whether she had been there the day of her job interview, but what could go wrong with that little alteration?

As she strolled along to the coffee shop she took a close look around. Everything seemed so different from what it had been lately. A lot of things had changed probably. Certainly. She wasn’t exactly far from the Glades, having rented the apartment although she hadn’t gotten the job yet. Yet as in this day of 2008.

She shook her head. This was still so crazy. It felt like a weird dream and that made her want to just do crazy things in this crazy dreamt world, but the fear of this not being a dream and her actions messing up everything she had worked to achieve were to immense. She couldn’t just risk all of that.

Felicity turned left into the road with her favorite coffee shop ever. With a glance to her watch she decided to not only take a coffee, but also something to eat. She felt like she was starving although she really couldn’t figure out how she could be hungry with everything going on right now.

As she entered the coffee shop she stepped right towards the counter, ordering that extra strong coffee she had missed so much and a sandwich to strengthen her for that job interview that was probably going to be a little bit messy because she was certainly going to babble from time to time, but in the end they were going to give her the job anyway.

Or she was going to get it if she was at least as professional as she had been when she had been there first. Luckily she didn’t feel as nervous as she had been that first time which could only mean that she was going to be more self-confident and more professional. She knew the technology of the future. Who else could say that about them?

Or wasn’t this like a re-living those next seven years? Were things going to change? Had life just given her a look of what could have happened to her if she had gotten that job and was now giving her the opposite?

Felicity sighed quietly. There were so many possibilities of what way this life was going to take. It could be exactly like it had been before or any other way. Everything could happen. So she should try to redo at least the most important acts in her life and hope that it was going to be enough to not change everything that her future was supposed to bring.

She paid for her coffee and her sandwich and turned around to leave when suddenly a way too familiar pair of eyes caught her attention. Felicity had to increase her grip on her cup of coffee to not let it drop to the floor as her hands started shaking and her heartbeat fastened.

“Hey, Ollie! Those look like they are about to leave. We could sit there!”

Felicity right away stared at Oliver who stood only a few feet away from her, wearing blue cargo shorts and a white shirt. His hair was longer, not only longer than the short haircut the League had given him, but also shorter than she had ever seen it on her Oliver. He was gesturing at someone who was walking through the coffee shop towards where a young couple was just about to leave.

She could barely take her eyes from him, but managed to at least glance at who he was talking to. Her heart dropped right to her stomach as she saw Tommy sliding down on one of the chairs, already studying the menu.

Oliver must have sensed her staring because he suddenly massaged the back of his neck with her hand and turned around, looking right at her with a questioning glance. For a short second she thought he might recognize her. When she remembered everything shouldn’t everyone else remember, too (why hadn’t she thought about that before?!), but then Oliver frowned, eying her up and Felicity felt herself blushing, bit down on her bottom lip and hurried to get out of the coffee shop as soon as possible.

She almost ran into – what a surprise! – Laurel on her way out and was just lucky to only seen in the corner of her eyes as Oliver put his arms around her kissed her. Really, it shouldn’t surprise her. Back in 2008 Oliver and Laurel had been together, but it was all so weird. Seeing them together after everything that had happened between her and Oliver was weird, even though Felicity was at least very sure now that she was the only one remembering any of what had happened.

She hurried around the next corner to be out of sight in case Oliver was going to take another look at her after she had been staring at him so obviously. She leaned with the back against the cold stone wall and closed her eyes.

Being here had been so surprising that she hadn’t really thought about what this actually meant. She had known that this meant that she was kind of stuck here, but she hadn’t spent one singular thought about all those other people whose lives had changed within the last years.

Tommy was not dead now.  
Laurel still had her sister.  
And Oliver hadn’t been through all these years of torture and suffering.

Maybe if she figured out what all of this was and what all of this meant, maybe she could spare all the people she had grown to known the suffering they had been through.

She had three days before Oliver was going to go on the Gambit and started his journey into five years of hell. Oliver being on the island had always seemed so fixed that she hadn’t even spent one thought on that being different.

But maybe she could find a way to prevent that. Maybe she could spare Oliver those years on the island and Hongkong and God knows where else he had been. Maybe she wasn’t going to die on the cold floor of a cell then, surrounded by her friends and betrayed by the man she loved like she had never loved anyone.

Felicity breathed in deeply, straightening her back and controlling her face. If she wanted to save her Oliver she would have to find out more about what was going on here and to do that she needed to spend a lot of time at her computers.

For a short second she thought about not going to job interview. It could be a waste of useful time she could need to stop Oliver from going on the Gambit. It was going to take a lot of work to stop him from that, given that he didn’t even know her yet.

Otherwise if she didn’t get Oliver to not go on that boat trip – because honestly, why should he listen to a completely stranger telling him that? – then she needed a backup plan to at least get him off the island as soon as possible and that was probably a lot easier if she was working for the Queen family and had all of that equipment to use to pretend to search for him while she knew where he was already.

As a slight headache started she shook her head and tried to shake those thoughts. She had to seriously think about all of that when she had that job interview behind her. Something made her feel like she really needed to get that job. She might not know what was going on here, but she knew that this was important.

From all her circling thoughts it seemed to be the only one that really was clear.

So Felicity sent a silent prayer to heaven, asking for enough time and strength to get through this. Because she really felt like she had no idea what to do.

“For now” she said to herself “you should go to QC and get that damn job.”

Nodding to herself she started her way.

 

Two and a half hours later Felicity still had no idea what she was going to do.

At least she had been to that job interview, Felicity tried to convince herself that she wasn’t just wasting time she could spend saving the man that she loved.

Against her expectations the job interview hadn’t been as good as she had thought. She had known every single question before the QC employee had asked, but her mind hat been busy, trying to figure out how she was not only going to save Oliver from all those years of pain and fear, but actually save everyone else whose life had been endangered because of Malcom Merlyn and his twisted idea of serve up justice for his wife’s death.

She hadn’t found a way to do that so far.

As she walked back from QC to her apartment she made up a plan to at least get some work done within the next hours. Till she couldn’t just run to Oliver and tell him not to go on that boat trip because the boat was manipulated by his best friend’s father and he was going to end up on a hellish island for the next years, becoming a hooded vigilante when he returned and then after fighting to figure out who he really was for more than two and a half years was going to join a group of psychotic murderers, actually deciding to kill the people who had come there to save him.

Felicity shook her head. The longer she thought about everything that happened here the crazier and weirder it got. She was used to help saving people, support the actual heroes who protected the city. Being part of a team like that was what she knew. But beating a man who had killed more than 500 people all on her own?

She had never really felt like a hero. She knew she did good and she knew that her help was actually a key to saving a lot of people, but she had always more felt like an assistant to the heroes than an actual hero herself.

Well, she might have no idea if she was actually going to achieve anything, but she knew for sure that she wasn’t going to achieve anything without a full pot of that heavenly strong coffee. So Felicity headed back towards the coffee shop. As soon as she had the coffee she was going to go back to her apartment, shutting the doors behind her and find out if there was any way to stop Malcolm from destroying almost everyone’s life.

She couldn’t stop herself from glancing to the corner where Tommy had decided they should sit down together when she had run into them this morning. He wasn’t there and Felicity felt her heart lift the tiniest bit. She wasn’t ready to run into him again just yet. Seeing him and knowing what was going to happen to him as long as she hadn’t figured out what to do to save him was just unbearable.

So after a long talk to the waitress who explained to her that they weren’t selling pots of coffee and she should order several cups instead, Felicity finally convinced her to just give her that pot of coffee and even paid some extra dollars for it.

While she stuffed her wallet into her purse she heard a voice next to her say: “Hi, sorry, Oliver Queen. I think you called because you have found my wallet?”

Immediately her head snapped to the side, seeking out Oliver’s eyes, but he kept them on the waitress, at least at first. As soon as he sensed her staring he looked at her, winking at her before looking back at the waitress. Felicity kept watching him and she could swear to be able to make out the exact second he recognized her from this morning.

Frowning he turned around, looking at her again.

“Do we know each other?”

Yes, we are soulmates and we love each other so much and even if you don’t know me I know you and I know that we are meant to be together, Felicity thought for a brief second and was very relieved to realize that her brain to mouth filter had worked at least this one time. So she shook her head instead with a slight smile and took her pot of coffee to leave. Oliver stepped in front of her before she was able to leave, eying her up.

“You’re cute” he said, looking at her with what was probably supposed to be a charming smile, but actually gave Felicity goose bumps of the not that good kind and she couldn’t even really say why.

Maybe it was the fact that he had no idea who she was or that only a few hours ago she had seen him kissing his girlfriend.

“Excuse me?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“You’re cute” he repeated. “And I’ve never seen you here which is a shame because like I said you are cute and I think the two of us could have a lot of fun and-“

Felicity didn’t know what had been turned the balance. Maybe it was the seductive smile he gave her as he tried to talk her into an adventure that was surely meant in a sexual way or maybe it had something to do with the subdued feelings after Oliver had left them in the cell to die or maybe it was something else Felicity couldn’t understand right then. All she knew was that one moment she was listening to Oliver’s words and the next second her hand was suddenly lashing out, slapping him right in the face.

Oliver stared at her in disbelieve, his mouth opened slightly. He looked shocked. Before he could say anything Felicity turned around and walked away.

Yes, she had wanted to save Oliver. She still did of course because no matter what nobody deserved to go through what he had to go through.

But for the first time since that possibility had been on the table, Felicity wondered, if saving this Oliver was going to bring her back her Oliver.

A tear rolled over her cheek as the realization reached down to her heart that maybe the answer to that question was No.


	2. Chapter 2

Felicity felt already dizzy from walking up and down for hours. She was sure that soon her legs were going to give out and she was going to fall to the floor. Her feet were hurting from all the walking although she had taken off her shoes shortly after she had returned to her old apartment where she had set up all her IT equipment and had started to hack her way into the server of the Merlyn Global Group.

Luckily for her their security system was really good for 2008, but not good enough for someone who had come right from 2015 where cyber security was so much better than nowadays.

It had taken a little more than one hour before she had managed to hack into the system. Now all she had to do was waiting. She knew it was going to take at least five more hours before the virus she had installed to spy the company’s server had managed to through all data.

Unfortunately Felicity had never been patient with something like that. Waiting was annoying and it wasn’t doing any good to her nails. The red colored nail of her right thumb had already been nibbled down.

She still hadn’t figured out what she was doing here exactly. Well, of course she knew that she was hacking and trying to prevent a lot of damage Malcolm Merlyn was planning to do to this city and its residents, but what if she found something? What was she going to do?

“You find evidence and bring it to the police” Felicity whispered to herself as the silence in her little apartment became too loud for her to take any longer. “You find evidence for Malcolm’s evil plans and send them to the police and they will take care of everything.”

Felicity knew that she was trying to encourage herself with that. She knew Malcolm Merlyn and she knew that the police was never going to catch him not matter how much information she was going to find. That man was pure evil and was certainly going to manage the Starling City Police Department with his pinky finger.

Sighing Felicity let herself fall onto her mattress and stared at the ceiling.

All of this was so crazy. Like hours ago she had been kind of working with Merlyn and now she was eight years back in time and tried to stop everything he had done that had led them to that cold ground of a cell in Nanda Parbat.

She still wasn’t sure any of this was real and she sure as hell still wasn’t sure whether she was doing any good here, but Felicity had the undying desire to protect the people she had grown to care about and if that meant risking her future as it had been then she was going to do that.

What was an exciting hero assistant job compared to all the good she could do here and now?

Or was she just fooling herself?

Felicity sighed and closed her eyes, trying to hold back the tears that had been burning in her eyes ever since she had met Oliver Queen for the second time today. Or was she going to say Ollie Queen?

Saving him from the island and everything else was surely going to spare him a lot of pain and torture. It was going to take all that broodiness and self-sacrificing away from him, but what else was it going to do?

Oliver had been a completely different person after the island. She hadn’t really met him before the island (at least not when she had lived through this for the first time), but everyone had said that and considering what she knew about his playboy image she was definitely going to agree.

The Oliver she had met today was not the Oliver she had fallen in love with.

So she had basically traveled back from a time where the man she loved had been a completely different person as in a coldhearted member of Corporate Evil to a time where he was a completely different person as in cheating playboy guy.

“Seems like he may not be lost all in all, but at least he’s lost to me no matter what” Felicity sighed, opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling once more.

There was this little part in herself that told her to just not save him right now. She should just wait and let him go to the island and help him when he was back in Starling just like she had before and just take care that none of the Nanda Parbat crap was going to happen. If everything would have been differently from the moment of their first date then maybe she was going to end up with him happily like she had hoped so often.

But Felicity ignored that voice in herself. She had let that voice lead her actions one time which had made her drug the man that she loved right after they had spent passionate hours of lovemaking. She had been so afraid of losing him that she had done this crazy thing. Oliver saying that he loved her even more for it had been the only thing that had made her forgive herself for that because even loving someone like that shouldn’t give you the right to drug them to save them from the mess they were in.

No, Felicity was going to stay rational on this. She was going to do whatever she could do to spare Oliver the island, to spare Laurel the death of her sister, to spare Tommy’s and Robert and Moira Queen’s deaths as well as that of many other people.

She turned her head to throw a glance at her computer. At least the virus had copied twelve percent of the system’s data right now. Although compared to the eighty-eight percent it still had to work through it didn’t really sounded like any progress.

A knock at the door prevented her from falling back into self-pity at the realization of how long she still had to wait until she could check the information the virus had collected and she could finally start doing any work.

Felicity frowned, staring at the closed door. Who should come here?

There wasn’t a single person in Starling City who knew her. Well, the QC employee who had been doing her job interview this morning knew, but he surely wouldn’t come here.

What if Malcolm Merlyn had realized that she had been hacking into his company’s computer system and had installed a nice little spyware that was copying most of the server’s data?

She felt her heartbeat fastening at that thought although she tried to tell herself that it was impossible. The virus she had used hadn’t been made until 2014. It was one of the best she had ever seen, almost invisible and it used every little gap a security system could have left.

“You are paranoid, Smoak!” Felicity hissed in a whisper, got up from the mattress and strolled towards the door, telling herself that it was probably one of her neighbors who wanted to introduce himself to her and she had forgotten that this had happened the first time.

Her hand at her doorknob already, Felicity made a mental note to get a peephole as soon as possible. She opened the door and froze.

“What the frak are you doing here?”

Oliver’s eyebrows rose immediately at her harsh tone, apparently surprised by her reaction which only made Felicity frown even more.

What the frak was he doing here? Hadn’t she made perfectly clear that she wasn’t interested?

For a short second Felicity’s mind drifted away, thinking about how stupid that sounded. She was interested in Oliver. God, she loved him. It was just that that Oliver in front of her wasn’t her Oliver, the one she loved. She knew a lot of people thought that if you loved someone than you accepted him just as he was, but that guy in front of her wasn’t exactly her taste which only sounded worse, Felicity though with a shake of her head.

As she lifted her eyes to look as Oliver she found him staring at her like she was crazy. She knew those glances. A lot of people had thrown them on her in her life.

“Did I say any of that out loud?” she asked with a slight panic in her voice.

If possible Oliver’s eyebrows rose even more as he shook his head, all the while keeping staring at her.

Hastily Felicity cleared her voice and brought her face back under control to look at Oliver seriously. Her brows her knitted, her lips puckered and her arms crossed in front of her chest.

She didn’t want to talk to him. Her disappointment of the Al-Sahim-Oliver and her anger at the Ollie-Oliver mixed with the desire for her Oliver made it almost impossible for her to talk to him. Seeing him was bad enough.

“What are you doing here?” she repeated her question.

Now Oliver frowned, too.

“I want an apology.”

Felicity snorted. – God, what the frak was wrong here that she was trying to save his life, but couldn’t get herself to say one sentence to him without sounding snappy. She just couldn’t.

“And you think that I owe you an apology because…?”

“How about because you slapped me?” he asked, pointed at the barely visible red mark at his left cheek.

Felicity needed to bite her tongue. Her Oliver would have never let her slap him or rather she would have never gotten that far because thanks to his super-senses he would have realized that she was going to slap him before her hand would have touched his cheek.

Well, a lot about this Oliver seemed so much different from her Oliver.

“Unfortunately I don’t think you deserve an apology” she snapped back, giving him a cold smile “which is why you should probably just turn around and go.”

Please, turn around and go, she pleaded with him in her head. She didn’t want to talk to him right now. She wanted to save him and figure out what she was going to do then. She didn’t expect to be a part of his life. They were both too different and she was always going to compare him to the Oliver she had first fallen in love with. Besides she didn’t really think that she was his type.

Not the point right now, she reminded herself.

“Anything else or…?”

“Okay, if you don’t want to give me the apology I actually think I deserve, I think you at least owe me an explanation.”

“For the slapping?”

“For the slapping.”

“How about you had no idea who I was and just offered me sexual adventures in the middle of a coffee shop?” she asked, blushing as soon as she realized what she had said. “I didn’t mean we were going to have sex… in the middle of a coffee shop… just… you made me that offer… in the middle of a coffee shop.”

Why did she have to babble at times like these?

“You were staring at me” he responded.

Felicity rolled her eyes. “That fact that you’ve been stared shouldn’t give you the free ticket to just act like a complete jerk.”

Now Oliver was almost laughing. It was a harsh laugh, but nonetheless he said: “You don’t know me.”

“Oh, trust me, I know who you are” Felicity answered dryly. She was too angry by now to just gulp down all her feelings and tell him to leave. Ollie (she didn’t really want to think about him as Oliver as much as she didn’t really liked to think about Al-Sahim as Oliver) wanted to act like a jerk so she was not holding back on telling him what she thought about him. “You are the kind of guy who has a nice girlfriend who plans to move in with you while you are planning on screwing her sister which still doesn’t stop you from offering fun to strangers. Well, and now you are here, although I slapped you. I slapped you and you are running after me because you just can’t get enough and you certainly can’t accept that not every girl you meet is into you right away.”

Ollie’s eyes went wide.

 

Yeah, Felicity thought, that must have been a hit.

“And if you excuse me now I have things to do” she snapped, slamming the door right into his face.

For the time of two heartbeats she was staring at the closed door, just breathing heavily from all the anger that was pouring through her veins.

The last time she had been feeling like this, like all she could do was be snappy had been after Oliver had decided to team up with Malcolm Merlyn. She had been angry with him, hadn’t been able to understand him and hadn’t even wanted to after everything that had happened.

That was what she felt now except the difference was that she was all alone in this city. There wasn’t a single person she could talk to.

All the people she had trusted then – Laurel, John, Roy, Lyla, partly even Ray – weren’t here and even if she went to find them, they weren’t going to be any help because they didn’t know her.

Felicity lay down on the mattress, letting the tears she had been holding back for so long stream over her face as she grieved the loss of the man that she loved, all of her friends and the life she had always dreamed of.

She had always known what gift getting to know Oliver had been, not only because she had fallen in love with him and had been able to help people like she had always wanted. Her work for Team Arrow had made her find so many friends. She hadn’t been alone in Starling City anymore. She had had a family.

And now all of that was lost and she wasn’t going to get it back.

She wasn’t going to get him back.

She was saving him from the island, knowing that she was going to prevent that he was going to become the man she had fallen in love with. But she was going to do it.

The crying made her tired. She felt herself slowly drifting into sleep.

Maybe, she thought, right before falling asleep, maybe this was hell.

 

A loud pling! woke her from her sleep.

Felicity needed several moments to re-orientate herself.

She had been having a wonderful dream. She had been back in Starling and she couldn’t really say how it come, but Oliver had been back there and he had told her how much he loved her and how much he wanted to escape everything. So they had just packed their things and had driven off into the sunset together.

Ignoring the pain that war once again forming in her chest Felicity got up and strolled over to her computer. The spyware had finally managed to work its way through the entire system, meaning she could now check which data might help the police to arrest Malcolm Merlyn.

Felicity wiped some tears that fell from her eyes away, took three deep breaths and started working.

Most of the data were useless, but she hadn’t expected anything different from that. Malcolm Merlyn had been too careful as to save more electronic data about his criminal intrigues than necessary.

There were some data that she knew were linked to his evil plan of destroying the Glades, but the only reason she knew about that was because she knew all about this plan. It wasn’t really enough to read any criminal activities into that.

“Look at that!” Felicity murmured, opening a file and leaning back in her chair. “That was quite stupid, Merlyn.”

It looked like Merlyn had enough trust into his security system to actually save the building plans for the earthquake generator. Felicity hadn’t thought he’d be that stupid. Well, the plan had actually been successfully deleted from the computer it had been saved on originally, but the server had made a copy and saved it in case any data would be deleted by a crash of the system.

She sent the plan and some other data that would hopefully convince someone at the SCPD that Malcolm Merlyn was a serious threat to people of the city. She hesitated only for a second, her finger swaying over the return button, before she pressed it, mailing the evidence to the police and accepting that probably everything was going to change now.


	3. Chapter 3

She should have known that Malcolm Merlyn was too smart to just leave evidence on his computers. That man wasn’t a little thief that was going to be caught, robbing some innocent girl’s purse.

Malcolm Merlyn’s house and his company had been searched through two nights back after the SCPD had received an anonymous mail that had hinted that Merlyn had been working on building a machine that could imitate earthquakes which had been against several laws.

The judge had disposed a searching of all of Merlyn’s properties just a few hours after the police had received the mail. While Merlyn had been interrogated at the police station a team of twenty officers and detectives had been searching for more evidence at his home and in his company. Several computers as well as documents had been confiscated, but the technical analysis unit hadn’t found anything.

Probably Merlyn had paid someone off for that or he had gotten a clue that the police was coming and had cleared everything.

Anyway the police had had no chance than to let Malcolm Merlyn go again, rehabilitating his reputation in a state-wide broadcasted press conference. They had claimed that the suspicion Merlyn might be involved in a coming act of terror had been proved to be wrong.

Felicity had spent the last hours trying to observe Merlyn. She had tried to follow him and take photos of people he was meeting which had been stupid because she knew most of the names of those people who were involved in the Undertaking since she had spent weeks analyzing that list for Walter and months helping Oliver to cross people off the list. She had just tried to find anything that was going to stop him, no matter how unpromising it had seemed.

It turned out that if you weren’t a hooded vigilante with bow and arrows you kind of didn’t stand a chance against his security staff because as bad as his IT security system had been, his bodyguards did their job pretty great and Felicity had to flee from then as soon as she had realized that they had sensed her.

Now she was strolling back towards her apartment, thinking about what else she could do to stop him. She knew that stopping Malcolm Merlyn wasn’t enough, not if you saw everything to the end, but stopping him was the first and most important thing she had to do. Everything had started with him and even if it wasn’t going to end with him it would probably be a start.

She needed another way though and she needed it fast. There were only hours left – if she remembered right there were like seven hours left – until Oliver was going to go on the Gambit. As soon as he would have done that, the mess was going to start. Sure, she wasn’t going to let him stay on that island or wherever else he had been for five long years, but even if he was going to be found just days after the sinking of the Gambit he would still have to suffer through his father’s death and losing Sara. They had to find Sara then and…

Sighing Felicity shook her head.

How had she ever believed that she was able to actually achieve something here? Who had she thought she was to actually think she could win against someone like Malcolm Merlyn? That she could stop a movement of God knows how many people who were trying and actually able to destroy a whole district?

What she needed was help. She needed John and Oliver and Roy and Laurel and Ray and Barry and whoever else was able to help her with that. She needed someone for fieldwork.

Knowing the future meant she had all the information she needed, but it just wasn’t enough to know all of this. She needed to convince other people, especially the police and she needed to stop him and…

Felicity shook her head and sighed again. Her thoughts had been going around in circles for hours now. She knew what she wanted to do, what she had to do in the first place, she just couldn’t think of a way how she was able to manage that without any help.

It turned out that finding another way wasn’t as easy as she had always thought.

Slowly she strolled onward. She felt tired. Her feet hurt. Her head was throbbing and her eyes burning, lids heavy from the lack of sleep. She kind of knew that sleeping was going to help her to organize her thoughts, but those last days she had felt unable to just lie down and rest. The time was running and every second she wasn’t achieving anything chances grew that Oliver was going to end up on that island, Robert was going to day and Sara was going to get lost and found by that crazy Dr. Ivo or whatever his name had been and everything was just going to repeat itself.

For the first time Felicity understood how much you could pressure yourself thinking that you had to save someone because you thought that you had to be able to help them, but found that you were failing miserably.

If she could go back in time (or was it forward in time since she had traveled back already and now needed to go six and a half years forward which were actually half a year back?) she would probably do a lot of things differently from how she had done them. She wouldn’t be going to blame Oliver for refusing to be with her. Well, she wouldn’t be going to be happy about it either, but she would understand it. She would understand the burden he was bearing.

Absorbed in her thoughts she rummaged around in her purse to find her keys. It took her a while before her finger closed around the cold metal and she could pull the bunch of keys out, looking for the right one to open her door.

“Hey” she heard someone whisper very close behind her and Felicity winced, the keys sliding out of her hands and falling to the ground with a loud noise that made her wince once more.

Her hand pressed to her chest she turned around and rolled with her eyes as soon as she saw Oliver or rather Ollie standing in front of her.

“Are you stalking me?” she asked.

He laughed, lifting his eyebrows. “Really? I was going to ask you the same question.”

“Well, I’m not the one showing up at a stranger’s door twice within eighty-four hours. Speaking of, how did you find out where I live?”

“After you slapped me and I finally felt able to move again I actually followed you here.”

“But you didn’t show up before hours later” Felicity remembered frowning.

Oliver put his hand into the pockets of his jeans, shrugging his shoulders.

“Oh, you needed to think about whether we had sex before and you should just leave it or whether it was worth trying to make me fall for you with your brazen demand of an apology” Felicity concluded, picking up her keys from her ground. “Well, like I said before you won’t get an apology so if you excuse me now I-“

“Wait!” he hurried to say, carefully grabbing her forearm to stop her from leaving. He pulled back his hands as her eyes snapped towards him and he lifted them with the palms for her to see like he was trying to convince her that he wasn’t a threat.

Felicity looked into his eyes and suddenly felt the anger fading. It was still there, but it didn’t seem to possess every cell of her body. She frowned, her eyes lingering on his. There was something in his eyes, something she couldn’t really name or describe, but she knew it was there and it reminded her so much more of her Oliver than of that Ollie-guy who she had been dealing with lately.

“How-?” he asked, snapping her out of her thoughts and Felicity automatically took another step back to get more distance between them. “How did you know all the things you knew? About Laurel and her sister and everything?”

“I read something about you and your girlfriend in a magazine and I guess I just made a good guess” she lied, biting her tongue. “You know, you are kind of predictable regarding your love affairs.”

Oliver stared at her and Felicity felt her heartbeat fastening for a reason she couldn’t make out. She inhaled deeply, before taking back another step and pointing towards the door with her thumb.

“I have to go now. I have important things to do and-“

“I broke up with Laurel.”

Felicity stopped mid-step, staring at him with wide eyes.

“You what?”

Oliver shrugged his shoulders, pressing his lips together and looking at her with his sad-little-puppy-eyes.

“And I canceled any plans I had with her sister Sara.”

“What?” Felicity asked again, unable to form coherent sentences that included more than a minimum of words.

If that was true then she had at least saved Sara. If Sara wasn’t going to go on that boat then she wasn’t be found by Ivo, she wasn’t making it to the island and wasn’t going to end up with the League afterwards. That seemed like the first little success she had made ever since time had turned back.

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but…” he hesitated and gulped before he ended the question “would you mind going on a walk with me?”

Felicity looked at him hesitatingly. What good did he expect to come from that? She was about to refuse, when her heart clenched at the realization how lost Oliver looked and she lost the internal fight against herself, giving him a short nod, although her feet already hurt.

Oliver led the way towards the nearest park. None of them said a word. They just walked quietly side by side, enough space between them to make sure they weren’t accidentally touching.

“So…” Oliver said after a while, clearing his voice. “You weren’t stalking me?”

“No” Felicity said shortly and he nodded.

Silence settled in again. Felicity tried to think about what she could possibly say, but figured, that she should better not say anything. She had said too much already when she had confronted Oliver about his planned affair with Sara.

Felicity had no idea how long they had just walked side by side without saying a word, but it had felt like half an eternity and not in a good way which was why she came to a stop, looking at him questioningly.

“Is there a reason you wanted to go for a walk with me or…?”

“What’s your name?”

“What?”

“What’s your name?” he repeated. “You know the most intimate things of my life and I don’t even know your name. So… what’s your name?”

“Felicity” she said with a slight smile. “Smoak.”

Oliver nodded. “I’m Oliver Queen, but you probably knew that.”

“I did” she nodded, cocking her head when he fell into silence again. “Are you going to say anything or more or had that been all?”

Oliver looked at her for a long moment before he breathed in deeply and replied: “I know this sounds crazy, but I somehow feel… I don’t know. Maybe I feel as if you have opened my eyes. I mean… I have always known that I am not exactly a good guy. I don’t care about college because my parents have so much money and I’m not faithful to my girlfriend because girls just come to me and… I don’t know. I’m not trying to apologize for my behavior. I just-“

“Did you tell Laurel any of that?” Felicity interrupted. “Because it’s kind of crazy that you feel like you need to explain yourself to a total stranger instead of the people you have hurt.”

Oliver nodded, burying his hands even deeper into the pockets of his pants. “I know. I told Laurel about my plans with Sara and I told her that all of that was my fault, that I talked Sara into that and that both of them deserved someone better.”

“Has it been like that?” Felicity asked. “Did you talk her into it?”

Oliver shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. It’s better she is angry at me than that she’s angry at her sister. Laurel shouldn’t lose her, especially not because of me.”

Felicity bit her tongue, unsure if she should be touched by that act of taking all the blame or not so she decided to not say anything about that at all. What was she supposed to say anyway?

“Why did you decide to break up with her now?” Felicity asked after a while. “Because a complete stranger new that you weren’t faithful? Or are you just using that as an excuse to get rid of her and-“

“You’re the first one to ever call me out on my actions” he interrupted her. “You are a complete stranger and you say to me what nobody else had ever dared to say. My mother knew that I hadn’t been faithful to Laurel and instead of talking to me about it and saying how disappointed she is of my behavior or anything like that, she covered it. I mean, I’ve dropped out of four colleges and their only reaction had been to sigh and give me a pile of college flyers to pick a new one.”

He smiled sadly and lowered his gaze to the floor. Felicity felt sorry for him. He looked so lost, almost as lost as he had been when the Arrow identity had been taken from him and he had had no idea who he had been or who he had been supposed to be.

“And now?” she asked. “What are you going to do with that epiphany?”

“I want to become a better person” he responded.

“And how are you planning on doing that?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She really wanted to believe him, she almost did since his eyes and the tone of his voice had sounded so honest, but it wasn’t just enough to think he might be honest. She needed proof and a plan might be proof enough for now.

“This morning I wrote an application for a college. I want to learn more about management and all the things I need to learn to manage our family’s company one day. I also talked to my father about an internship at Queen Consolidated to gain some actual experience. He agreed, although I think he doesn’t really take me serious. At least he suggested that I still go on that trip to China with him because we might need a little bonding time and he wanted to know more about my plans so I can use that time to convince him of how serious I am with this” he explained, glancing at his watch before smiling at Felicity again. “We want to start in six hours and I still need to pack and get some other things done to start into this new part of my life so I should probably go now. I just… Can I… I don’t know… maybe call you when I’m back?”

“What?” Felicity asked, immediately thinking that she really needed to expand her word pool considering how often she had said ‘what’ lately.

“Felicity, you had such a big impact on my life” he said and Felicity frowned once more. “I know that we barely know each other, but… I don’t know. I just feel like I owe you something and-“

“You don’t owe me anything. You can go and live your life. You don’t have to feel obliged to stay in contact with me or anything.”

“Oh, I don’t feel obliged” he hurried to say. “I want to stay in contact. That’s the thing, Felicity. I want to stay in contact with you because I feel like you do me good and I’d like to see you again. I don’t know, maybe one day I will be a man that deserves you and…”

He shrugged, looking at her shyly.

“Oliver, you’ve just broken up with Laurel. I don’t think you should get into another relationship before you have found out who you really are” she answered. “Apart from that fake playboy guy you have been those last years.”

Oliver nodded. He looked to the floor before looking back up at her again.

“But we could try and become friends, right?” he asked. “I mean… I think from time to time I will certainly need someone to kick my ass and since you’ve proved to have quite a talent in that I thought you might want to have a permanent position to do that.”

“Like personal ass-kicker of Oliver Queen?” Felicity laughed, but nodded finally. “I’d like that. So yes, you can call me when you’re back from-“

The boat trip, Felicity suddenly thought. She had been so surprised that Oliver had wanted to see her again that she had totally forgotten about the fact that if he went on that boat trip he wasn’t returning anytime soon.

And this time it might be her fault, she added and felt all color leave her face. She had made Oliver realize that he could be a better person and he was trying to be a better person by accompanying his father on that boat trip to hell. Of course it was a boat trip that he had been part of anyways, but now he was going on that trip because of something she had started.

“Hey” Oliver whispered, pulling her from her thoughts and framed her face with his hands while he was looking at her worriedly. “What’s wrong?”

She breathed in, shaking slightly, and let her face sink into his palms a little. How was she supposed to tell him what was probably going to happen if he went on that boat?

“If I asked you” she said after while, a low sob audible in her tone “not to go on that boat and to convince your father to not go on that boat trip wither would you do it?”

Oliver frowned, his thumbs drawing circles on her cheeks.

“Felicity, it’s just a boat trip” he smiled. “I’ll be back soon and then we start our… friendship.”

“But-“ Felicity started, but stopped, not knowing what to say. “Please?”

The way he looked at her, Felicity realized, was so much like Oliver had done back or forth in 2014 when she had cried because of that terrible fight with her mother about her not having a boyfriend and being a disappointment to her.

Felicity felt herself wavering. She had tried to distinguish between all those versions of Oliver. She had tried to not mix Al-Sahim-Oliver with her Oliver and her Oliver with Ollie-Oliver, but she was really close to mixing those last two.

Rationally she knew that the Oliver in front of her wasn’t the Oliver she had loved back/forth (always the same dilemma with that words) in 2015. Rationally she knew that and she didn’t expect this Oliver to become the Oliver she had fallen in love with. She was basically working against it by preventing his life on the island. But he might get a new version of Oliver that she could fall in love with.

Right now he was very close to tread that path. They were close.

“Please don’t go” she repeated. “Please don’t go on that boat. I- I can’t explain it, but please convince your father to not go on that trip.”

Oliver just smiled softly. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, just like he had when he had left for his duel with Ra’s al Ghul, just that his hands were still holding her face. Felicity’s stomach dropped at that thought. He had left to die then and he left to at least die in same way now, too, even if he didn’t know it.

“I’ll call you as soon as I’m back” he said, his hands slowly sliding from her face. “Bye, Felicity.”

He breathed in deeply before he turned around and went away. Felicity watched him go away as he became smaller and smaller until she couldn’t see him anymore.

This hurt at least as much as leaving him in Nanda Parbat had hurt her.

She didn’t love this Oliver the same way she had loved and still loved her Oliver. This Oliver here had a lot of similarities to her Oliver though. She had seen it today and she should have probably known that before because this Oliver was an earlier version of her Oliver and she just suggested that both of them had kind of the same core.

It wasn’t easy to put into words how she felt about this Oliver.

“Bye, Oliver” she whispered, even though she knew that he couldn’t hear her.

Her eyes lingered at the point where she had last seen him for some more moments before she could convince herself to turn around and go back to her apartment.

There was this low voice in her that was trying to convince her that everything was going to be fine and that she was going to see him again because she would do whatever it was going to take for her to get him back from that island.

Unfortunately there was this other voice, a chorus of voices actually, that were creating doubts successfully. She had changed the future with everything she had done. So what if Oliver wasn’t going to make it to the life boat? What if Oliver and Robert were going to die when the Gambit was going to sink?

What if her actions had changed the future and through it she had made everything worse?  
What if Oliver and Robert were going to die because of her try to actually save them?

Felicity knew that thinking like that wasn’t helpful at all. She needed to keep cool and keep working on saving all those lives that were in danger because of Malcolm Merlyn.

She needed to work on finding another way just like she had told Oliver whenever he had doubted that he was achieving anything with his actions.

Felicity also felt like she needed to sleep for at least twenty-four hours but that had to wait until she had achieved more than just saving Sara. That had been a good start, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to do more.

Since she hadn’t found a way to stop the Gambit from leaving the harbor, she at least needed to make sure-

“Ow!” she screeched when she felt a stinging pain in her neck as she rounded the corner into the street of her home.

She stood still in the middle of the empty street, moving her hand to the back of her neck where she located the pain and frowned when she felt a piece of metal stuck out of her skin.

Before she could pull it out and look at what it was, some fabric was pulled over her head, taking away her vision and although Felicity knew that she was supposed to defend herself she felt herself unable to move, her arms and legs becoming heavier very quickly and only seconds after the pain had started her whole body became limb, her consciousness fading away.


	4. Chapter 4

Felicity had a terrible headache. There was a throbbing pain in the middle of her brain and it seemed to extend to every other part of her body. Her neck, her ribcage, her stomach, her legs – everything hurt.

Her chin rested on her chest, her head feeling heavy. Felicity wanted to raise her head to decrease the tension in her neck from having it bent that much, but her muscles refused to listen to what her brain told her. Besides, Felicity felt so tired that she was on the edge of falling back asleep so she allowed her lids to stay closed and-

A sharp pain ran through her body as her head was ripped backwards. Her eyes opened, blinking repeatedly they tried to get used to the flickering light around her while the last moments before she had lost consciousness flashed through her mind.

She had said goodbye to Oliver who had left to join his father on his boat trip to China. She had been on her way to her apartment, trying to convince herself that everything was okay. She had tried to convince herself that she wasn’t going to lose him forever when a pain had started in her neck, her body had become numb and she had fallen into an endless black hole.

Finally her eyes allowed her to see clearly or at least as clearly as she could see in the semi-darkness of the location she was in.

From the little light that came from some torches that were set up in an espalier she could see that she was in a factory. Somehow the location seemed familiar. She couldn’t say why though. Carefully she turned her head which wasn’t easy since every movement hurt and her body felt stiff. She tried to find something to give her a hint about where exactly she was. Felicity had to narrow her eyes to get a clearer view, but then she could actually read the words “Queen Industrial Inc.” painted to one of the filthy walls.

She had to be at the old factory. She hadn’t recognized the rooms since she had only known them as Verdant and everything had looked so different then. If she had been in the basement she would have probably recognized it after all the time she had spent there. But this?

She still felt dizzy. It was probably part of the reason for why she didn’t sense the person stepping in front of her any sooner than until he was near enough for her to hear the rustling of his clothes when he moved. Hastily Felicity turned her head to look that person, but found her view becoming blurred from the fast movement of her head. She had to press her eyes closed for a second before she could open them again and finally see who was standing in front of her.

Serious eyes met hers as she faced the man who had her abducted. He wore the same dark robe he had been wearing when she had last seen him and of course he held his hands behind his back like he always did and like Oliver had done lately before he had poisoned her and their friends in that cell in Nanda Parbat.

Looked like she had traveled back in time only to die because of him once again, Felicity thought bitterly and bit down on her tongue to subdue a frustrated sigh because this seriously felt like life was playing a dirty trick on her. If that was how it was going to end then what had been the purpose of traveling back in time?

Sure, she had saved Sara, but there were still so many more lives that were endangered and that she could maybe save with the knowledge of the future.

Ra’s gave someone behind her a slight nod and whoever had pulled on her hair let go and she could hear him take a step back from her while Ra’s simultaneously took a step towards her. Felicity had to bite her tongue with even more force to resist the instinct to slide back on the chair as far as possible from him. She could taste blood in her mouth, but didn’t as much as wince.

If he was going to do anything to endanger her plans on saving Oliver she would-

Well, she was probably going to die, Felicity thought, but if she was then she was going to refuse to go into that shiny light people always talked about. She was going to refuse to find the piece of her mind and instead was going to make his life a living hell. She was going to be a ghost, haunting him every single second of every single day until he died himself and maybe even beyond.

“I apologize for the coarse treatment” Ra’s said with calm voice, flashing a glance to that someone behind her. Felicity resisted the need to turn around and find out who there was behind her, not taking her eyes off the man in front of her. “I didn’t think I’d get you to speak to me of your own accord.”

Felicity stared at him angrily. He was damn right. She wouldn’t have spoken to him of own accord. She wasn’t even sure if she was speaking to him under the pressure of this abduction.

“Do you know who I am, child?” he asked.

Felicity thought about not answering and just staring at him, but she was sure Ra’s was going to be more impressed by her knowing who he was than by her angry gaze.

“You’re the Demon” Felicity replied shortly.

Ra’s didn’t even blink as she said his name like it was normal for everyone to know it. It probably would have been more appropriate if he had split himself in two just like Rumpelstiltskin had when the queen had guessed his name right. And it would have been so practical since she would have gotten rid of him then.

“What do you want from me?” Felicity asked.

“Al Sa-Her, the man that is known as Malcolm Merlyn round here. You have made cruel accusations against him. He was one of my Assassins in the League a long time ago and even if he isn’t nowadays I cannot allow anyone to threaten a man who was under my protection” Ra’s explained to her.

Felicity didn’t look away. Her heartbeat had fastened and she could hear the pounding of her heart in her ears, but she wasn’t going to give Ra’s the satisfaction of having her scared.

Besides, she had the feeling that there was something more to come. After everything she knew about Ra’s he hadn’t been as protective of Malcolm Merlyn before as he was now. Of course everything could be different now that she had changed the future, but something told Felicity that if there was anything that hadn’t changed, it was Ra’s attitude regarding the only man he had ever allowed leaving the League.

And in addition to that Felicity was certain that Ra’s knew that Malcolm Merlyn didn’t need any protection from a little IT-girl that had never learned any form of real fighting. If she really were a threat to Merlyn he would have killed her himself by now. Ra’s had to know that because just as he had said, Merlyn had been one of his.

“I didn’t accuse him of anything he isn’t guilty of” Felicity said.

“I was eleven years old when I killed my first man” he told her like he hadn’t heard her and Felicity quietly wondered if he was seriously going to tell her a story like he hadn’t just had her drugged and abducted. “I remember the look in his face when the light went out behind his eyes. Such a sudden change, almost imperceptible, between life and death. And I felt ashamed. I had stolen from that man the most precious gift of all – life. But I also felt something else – pride. Because I had taken up arms against someone who sought to do ill against my family. And I realized what I had done was necessary. You see... I had replaced evil with death. And that... is what the League exists to do. And I have killed several thousand more men since then. And the world is better off for it.”

He had told Oliver that exact same story before he had fought him on that mountain after Oliver had challenged him to trail by combat. Oliver had told Diggle about it.

Felicity had asked herself why he had told Oliver that story and she wondered why he told her the story now.

“When I released Al Sa-Her from his bonds to the League it came with one condition. He had to keep living up to the League’s code of replacing evil with death and if he doesn’t manage to do so he had to at least not become evil himself.”

It was that last sentence that made Felicity understand what this was about. The League’s code had to be honored and every violation of the code was punished with death. Ra’s al Ghul was personally going to kill everyone who hurt the code. He had Merlyn abducted and attempted to kill him as he had violated the code. That probably wasn’t going to change in this world.

The planned Undertaking was something that would violate the code and that made Merlyn target of the League.

“Tell me, child” Ra’s spoke again. “Are your accusations true? Did Al Sa-her dishonor the League’s code and with that tried to take me as a fool by acting against our understanding behind my back?”

A thousand questions and thoughts flashed through her mind.

Why had Ra’s come to her about it?

Why hadn’t he just sent someone over to find out if those accusations were true?

How had he known it had been her who had told the police about Malcolm Merlyn’s plans?

What was she going to do now?

She had been okay with Ra’s killing Malcolm when Thea had turned him over to the League to make him face justice for his actions and she had been furious with Oliver for going to Nanda Parbat and saving him. They could have gotten rid of him without getting their hands dirty. Ra’s would have taken care of him.

But as Oliver had stated Thea would have never come back from that. Take someone over to his killers had to be changing a person. It had to have an influence on your life because even if you weren’t the one with the weapon in the hand you still were still at fault. Was it going to change her?

What if she lied and said it was all a lie? Was Ra’s going to kill her and did that mean that history was repeating itself with Robert ending up killing himself and Oliver suffering all those years to return as the hooded vigilante because she wasn’t there to get him from the island before too much damage was done?

Could she ever find piece in death when she had missed the chance of saving all those people whose lives were in danger?

“Why would you believe me? I could just tell you that it’s true because maybe I don’t like Malcolm Merlyn’s nose” Felicity said, trying to win time, but failing miserably at finding something smart to say.

“Should that be true and I find out that you have tried to fool me I will find you and you will pay the price for your actions that can only be measured in agony and blood. Just like Al Sa-Her will in case your accusations are true” he answered her.

“What you are doing is perverse!” she hissed the same words between gritted teeth she had yelled at him once before when she had confronted him about what he had been doing to Oliver to make him join the League.

“I should let my daughter rip your head from your shoulders” he answered, his voice rough for the first time and he knitted his brows. Felicity heard the sharp sound of a sword being pulled out of the sheath, but Ra’s threw a short glance behind her where Nyssa was probably standing and shook his head before he looked back at her again. “Now answer me, child.”

Felicity bit her tongue and held her breath as she stared at Ra’s, the only man who had managed to make her hate him as much as she hated Malcolm Merlyn.

Both of them had done so much damage and caused so much pain with the cruel actions. They had taken lives to fulfill their own selfish goals, not caring what that had meant for others. They had been recklessly destroying people.

It wasn’t just a choice between saving the people she loved and letting terrible things happen to them that were going to change them to a point of now return.

It wasn’t just a choice between dying herself and getting Malcolm Merlyn killed.

It was a choice between deciding to let the end justify the means and refusing to do so.

It was a choice between risking her own soul and risking other $people’s lives. A lot of people’s lives actually.

“My accusations are true” she answered strongly. “Malcolm Merlyn plans to destroy a district of Starling City by using a device that can create earthquakes. He might get thousands of people killed.”

Holding her breath she waited for Ra’s to say something or do something. He just looked at her, face dead-serious as he eyed her up.

“Is anybody else involved in that plan?”

Felicity gulped and hastily tried to think about an answer that wasn’t going to orphan any more people. Tommy was going to lose his father and Thea was in some way, too, even if she might never know about it.

She didn’t want to orphan any more people.

No matter how evil your father was, having him killed wasn’t going to make your life any better or easier. You always had to live with the knowledge of his actions. You had to live knowing what he had been capable of and in some way you would still love him because he was still your father.

Thea and Tommy were probably lucky Malcolm Merlyn had failed to be a good father in the first place.

“There are people following him” Felicity said after a while, still not sure if what she was about to say was the right thing to say. “Malcolm Merlyn is the leader, but there is a small group of people that are working with him. I am almost sure a threat will be enough for them to stop fulfilling his plans once Merlyn is dead. Don’t kill them. Don’t hurt them. Just threat them. Most of them have family. They won’t risk ending up like Malcolm Merlyn.”

His face was still unchanged when he told her: “The League doesn’t take civilian’s orders.”

Of course they didn’t, Felicity thought, biting her tongue. Ra’s had proved more than once in the past/future that Ra’s just followed his own orders. Of course it wasn’t any different here and now. It was still frustrating.

She inhaled deeply, once more thinking about what was the right thing to say. Talking to Ra’s constantly felt like Russian Roulette. She felt like she was holding that gun to her head, pulling the trigger again and again by talking to him like she knew exactly what she was doing while she was scared the next time she pulled the trigger the bullet was going to hit her. Still she knew that she had to pull the trigger again and again, no matter how scared she was because Ra’s could end the game by killing her any time.

It felt bizarre and it was perverse and she was going to have horrible night mares from this if she survived, but still she kept going.

“Without the information you received from me Merlyn would have you fooled. The League would have always remembered you as the only leader who had managed to get a lot of innocent people killed because you had shown fondness to one of your assassins and he had used that against you. Now you get the chance to correct that. Because you me. I think you kind of owe me this one wish I have.”

Ra’s looked at her silently. Felicity could almost see his brain working, trying to figure out what he had to do. In all his years of living he had probably never been fooled by one of his assassins and then bullied around by a blonde little girl. Not looking away, Felicity prayed that if she had ever done any good in her life that maybe she was lucky enough to have Ra’s convinced.

“I civilizations past, when someone in the village was murdered, the League would come and kill fifty people a day until the true criminal was rooted out” he told her and Felicity frowned. This didn’t seem like he was convinced. “I am willing to fulfill your wish since you have turned Al Sa-Her over to the League’s justice. But if I kill him and find out he’s not the only one actively working on the fulfillment of that plan I will kill fifty innocent people each day you haven’t turned yourself over to pay the price for your actions and just like Al Sa-Her’s that can only be measured in blood and pain.”

Her heart was beating that fast now that she was afraid it might crack her ribs since it bumped against them with a force that surely could break bones. She tried to let her breathing stay calm and even, but her lungs were burning from the wild beating of her heart and Ra’s could probably hear both – the wild beat of her heart and the loudness of her breathing. The corners of his lips lifted slightly, knowing that he had finally managed to scare her.

Felicity hesitated. She didn’t know much about the people Malcolm Merlyn had worked with. She knew that Robert Queen had wanted to right his wrongs after the Undertaking, but had never come around to it since Merlyn had gotten him out of the way before that could have happened and Robert Queen had decided to enjoin that on his son instead.

But what did she know about those other people? Any of them could decide to become the new leader and finish what Malcolm Merlyn had started. And that was going to be her death.

“I will accept my punishment if people die because of me” she replied nonetheless.

She had no choice. She was going to keep an eye on the people who knew about the Undertaking and if the League’s threats weren’t enough to keep them still she was going to find a way to hold them down. She wasn’t going to let another Undertaking happen, no matter what it cost her.

As soon as she was out of here was getting started on saving Oliver and hopefully Robert, she thought while telling Ra’s the name of the people following Merlyn and his crazy vision of justice. Maybe the change of the future had already changed Robert’s and Oliver’s path, hopefully for the better. Maybe both of them had stranded on the island from where she could save them and bring them back home.

“Can I go now?” Felicity asked.

Ra’s watched her closely, cocking his head slightly as he stepped closer until the tips of his boots almost made contact with her pumps.

“You have a great fire within you” he told her just like he had in Nanda Parbat after they had resurrected Thea. “You are what I am looking for in members of the League. You desire to serve justice. The League might be the right place for you to fulfill your destiny. We are justice and isn't that what you've obviously dedicated your life to? Then why confine your crusade to a single city? I can give you a whole world to save. Joining the League might bring you closer to who you desire to be.”

“Can I go now?” Felicity just asked again, not thinking his suggestion deserved an answer.

She needed to go home. She had no idea how much time had already passed since her abduction. Every more minute she was here kept her from making up a plan to get back Oliver from where he was hopefully stranded. She refused to think that he might have died already or was going to die soon.

“Al-Owal will take you home.”

“But-“

Felicity didn’t get to answer since she felt the same pain she had felt when they had abducted her again. Someone pulled a fabric over her head and everything became dark.


	5. Chapter 5

Her eyes opened tiredly, but her view was hindered by strands of her hair lying on her face. Slowly her hand came up to remove the golden locks from her eyes and she could finally see the filthy ceiling of her apartment.

Felicity had a terrible headache. There was a throbbing pain in the middle of her brain and it seemed to extend to every other part of her body. Her neck, her ribcage, her stomach, her legs – everything hurt and-

Immediately she sat up straight in bed, gasping for breath as she remembered her encounter with Ra’s al Ghul and how she had basically asked him to kill Malcolm Merlyn and to threaten everyone who had been working with him on making the Undertaking happen.

Her heart and chest felt heavy and although the drugs they had given her probably had aftereffects that could explain that, Felicity was almost sure that the face that she was feeling that way had nothing to do with whatever the League had injected her.

She had told a horrible mass murderer who didn’t hesitate to kill innocents if they were in his way to kill someone. Ra’s had killed Thea and he had ordered Maseo to kill her just to get Oliver to join the League and now she had told that same man to kill someone else. Well, technically Ra’s would have probably killed Merlyn even if she hadn’t told him to, but still it made her stomach flip and her skin become hot.

She dragged herself to her feet and stumbled to the door, grabbing her keys and her purse on her way. She needed to get out of here. She needed to get air, to really breathe again since her lungs were burning and the sticky air in her apartment wasn’t helping the sudden lack of oxygen.

Felicity almost ran down the stairs, opened the door and pulled in a deep breath of cool air. Closing her eyes, she held her breath for a second before she exhaled slowly and opened her eyes again, feeling the tiniest bit calmer than seconds before.

Nervously she looked around, making sure nobody had seen her crazy behavior. She didn’t want to scare any kids. It was enough that there was a part in her soul that was scared of herself.

But it seemed like nobody was here anyway. The sun was just rising and with a short look at the clock she realized it wasn’t after five in the morning which meant she had been kidnapped like fifteen hours ago and Oliver had left Starling to his boat trip to hell like nine hours ago and future was on its way to repeating itself.

They had gone on that boat trip on the late afternoon and the boat had sunk the second night they’ve been away. So everything was going to happen within the next twenty-four hours. And because that just didn’t seem to be enough Felicity still didn’t have a plan how to get Oliver back before he was tortured and her mind kept spinning around what she had done so she really didn’t see a chance that she was going to find a way that soon.

She sat down on one of the park benches and with a deep sigh she laid her head back so she could look into the semi-dark sky. She needed to take some more deep breaths.

What had she done?

She had wanted to save Oliver, she still did, but hadn’t she always been against letting the end justify the means? Hadn’t she always told Oliver that she hadn’t signed up to go around and kill people, orphaning their children in the process? That he had to find another way?

Deep down Felicity knew that Ra’s had just needed an excuse to kill Merlyn. He would have done it even if she hadn’t told him to. As he had said himself, he didn’t take orders from civilians.

Still Felicity felt an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach for having ordered someone to kill someone else.

It was ridiculous. She had told Oliver to kill Ra’s and she had been willing to let Merlyn die when-

Shaking her head she sighed again and closed her eyes. She had been through all these thoughts already. Rethinking them wasn’t going to lead her to any other conclusions. She had made a decision and she would have to live with it.

God damn it! It was just Malcolm Merlyn! He had left little Tommy after his mother had been killed. He had joined the League to become a reckless killer. He had become exactly that and had killed more than half a thousand people. He had drugged his own daughter and made her kill a friend. He had made Oliver and all of Starling City’s citizens targets of the League.

If there was one person in this world that deserved death, then it was Malcolm Merlyn. And he should better die when he hadn’t put the damage he was capable of doing in execution yet.

Felicity took in another deep breath, nodding slightly to herself.

She had made the right decision. Her choices had been saving Malcolm Merlyn or saving many innocent people. She had chosen the innocents and she was not going to let that ruin her life. Not now and not ever.

Felicity stayed where she was for another few minutes, just taking deep breaths until her mind was as much at ease as possible given the circumstances. Straightening her shoulder she got up from the bench and strolled back to her apartment. As much as she needed this fresh morning air to soothe the pain in her stomach, she just hadn’t time to go for long walks in the park.

She had to save Oliver and even if he wasn’t even shipwrecked yet, she couldn’t start working on a plan to save him too soon.

First thing to do was probably to figure out what unities were going to search for the survivors of the shipwreck. Maybe she could hack into their computers and lead the search party towards the island. It couldn’t be that hard, right? After all their technologies were still years behind her knowledge.

She thought about getting herself some of the good coffee, but decided against it. Coffee was just going to make her nervous right now and if she wanted to make up a plan to save Oliver she needed all her concentration on this.

Felicity was barley ten feet away from her front door when she started searching for her keys in her purse. She hated that she always had to search for her keys. Why couldn’t they just like Harry-Potter-Style fly towards her whenever she said Accio! It would probably spare her a lot of time and nerves since she was afraid of having lost her keys way too-

“Hey.”

Almost expecting to get a sword ripped through her chest, Felicity held her arms protectively in front of her body, dropping her purse in the process while simultaneously turning around to the source of her horror.

“Wow, I really didn’t mean to scare you like that!” Oliver almost laughed, holding his hands up like a criminal proving that he didn’t have any weapons before bending down and picking up her purse, casually wiping away some dirt.

Felicity’s lips opened in disbelieve, her eyes almost staring at where Oliver stood almost right in front of her, his hair almost as short as it had been when she had last seen him. He wore jeans and a dress shirt that looked ridiculously similar to the one he had worn when he had asked her out for their first date. Smiling a little insecurely he held out her purse for her.

But it wasn’t the change in his appearance that astonished her the most. It was more the fact that he was here at all.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice only a barely audible whisper.

Oliver shrugged his shoulders, burying his hands deep in the pockets of her hands. “I know I said I was going to call you when I return from China, but turned out that we didn’t exchange numbers. So I figured I was just going to wait in front of your house for you to show up. I wouldn’t have taken you for an early bird by the way.”

“Couldn’t sleep” Felicity answered shortly, still staring at Oliver. “What happened to the boat trip?”

Oliver sighed, shrugging his shoulders once more. “We’ve already been on our way for like two or three hours when my we got the message that my best friend’s father who also happens to be my father’s best friend had been killed. So we returned to Starling. I’ve been with Tommy those last hours, trying to comfort him. When he wanted to be alone I decided to come here and tell you. Since you were so worried about the boat trip I wanted you to know that I am back. So you don’t have to worry anymore and-“

Felicity couldn’t wait any longer. The relief that lightened her heart at his moment took over her body. So without any hesitation she made a step towards Oliver, wrapped her arms around his neck and straightened up onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips.

His lips felt exactly as soft as they had when she had kissed him before her time travel. When she slid her tongue above his bottom lip it tasted exactly like it had before her time travel. Part of her felt awful for thinking about that Oliver while she was kissing this Oliver, but she blocked out that thought.

Oliver only hesitated for a second after her tongue had made contact with his lip. He then let her purse drop back to the floor and slid his arms around her waist to pull her closer until her chest was pressed against his. Slowly he opened his lips and allowed her tongue to enter his mouth.

Parts of Felicity screamed that all of this was going way too fast and that she should take a step back and apologize and remind him that she had wanted to be just friends until he had figured out who he really was, but right now this wasn’t about Oliver. This was about her and what she wanted and what she needed.

Felicity needed Oliver. She wanted Oliver. And even if this version of Oliver wasn’t the one she had fallen in love with, he was still a good person and he was still the only Oliver around here right now. And God, she just needed a good Oliver right now and she needed his closeness right now and the taste of his lips on hers and the smell of his skin in her nose and everything. She needed it.

“What was that?” Oliver asked when they pulled apart breathlessly, both gasping for air while their foreheads rested against each other’s and their bodies were still pressed closed to each other’s.

“A kiss?” Felicity answered smiling.

“Oh, I’ve realized that” Oliver laughed, sliding his lips over hers once more. “But you said you wanted me to figure out who I am and take things slow, become friends and see where things were taking us. So the kiss came like out of nowhere. Not that I mind…”

Felicity tipped her head back so she could look at Oliver who smiled at her reverently.

“I don’t know” she then sighed, leaning her head forwards so she could rest her cheek against his chest and listen to the beat of his heart while hugging him tightly just as he hugged her close to him.

Listening to his slow but nonetheless strong heartbeat calmed her down. It was proof that he wasn’t lost or dead, but that he was right here with her, holding her in his arms and letting her as close to him as he hadn’t let her in a while now.

They stayed like that for a while, not saying a word and just enjoying each other’s presence. Felicity felt safe and almost relaxed for the first time in a long time. She felt all the tiredness and exhaustion that had been building ever since she had left Oliver in Nanda Parbat washed over her. Her eyes began to close on own accords as she slowly started melting more into Oliver’s chest, literally falling asleep while still standing.

Felicity had to take a deep breath to get her eyes to open again and push herself a little away from Oliver so the warmth of his body wasn’t lulling her fully into sleep. Her hands slipped from his shoulders and down his arms where his hands caught them, entwining his fingers with hers.

“How’s your friend?” she asked.

Oliver sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “He’s… sad, I guess. He didn’t have the best relationship to his father and I guess the shock about what he had been planning to do is bothering Tommy more than that he’s an orphan now.”

Felicity nodded slightly, but frowned then, remembering that she couldn’t know what Merlyn had been planning to do since he had been officially freed from any blame.

“Why? What did he plan to do?” Felicity asked carefully.

“A few days ago there have been accusations that he was planning to destroy the Glades. The police couldn’t find any more evidence then what they had been sent in an anonymous mail so they had to let him go. Anyway, when his body was found a few hours ago it seemed like he had been in a pool of evidence. The police wouldn’t tell us what they had found, but they made very clear that given what they had found Malcolm would be convicted if he was still been alive.”

“Wow…” Felicity said, biting her tongue. “So he was killed because of that?”

Oliver nodded, his thumbs stroking over the back of her hands, when he answered: “Looks like that. I guess that means Starling City had its own personal guardian angel, right? It has to be a good person that protects all those people of the Glades, right?”

Thinking of Ra’s as a guardian angel made her skin crawl, but Felicity nodded with what she hoped was a convincing smile.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be at Tommy’s and… I don’t know… comfort him?”

“Like I said, he wanted to be alone” Oliver answered. “And Laurel and Sara came by when I left so I guess it was for the best for all of us that I was on my way out there already.”

Felicity nodded. “They hate you?”

“They are angry” Oliver responded with a shrug of his shoulders. “They have the right to be angry. I just hope we can all find a way to at least handle each other with politeness. I can’t expect them to become friends with me after what I did and I would deserve them being angry at me for the rest of their lives, but I think Tommy needs all of his friends now, including them and me.”

“Very adult of you.”

“I think it is more adult of them” Oliver sighed with the hint of a smile on his lips before he lifted her right hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “How about I invite you to that coffee shop you slapped me in so impressively and while we have breakfast we will catch up on getting to know each other better, hm?”

Felicity smiled and nodded. “I’m starving actually.”

“Well, we certainly gotta do something against that” Oliver replied, kissing the corner of her lips before picking up her purse from the floor once more, sliding an arm around her waist and leading her towards the coffee shop.

Felicity let her head fall against his shoulder and breathed in deeply, feeling a little bit better and freer of her guilt with every second she spent with him.

 

 

 

The breakfast was followed by a walk back to her apartment, but they just couldn’t part so they walked around the block at least five times until it was time for lunch and they headed for the next Italian restaurant where they stayed until the early evening.

Felicity suggested that for Oliver it was kind of crazy how close they already felt to one another although they had just met. To be honest Felicity herself was surprised by it as well since she hadn’t really thought that she was going to discover so many similarities between her old Oliver and this new Oliver.

Despite of the obvious things like the part of their biography and their good looks, this Oliver still looked at her as intensely as before so he didn’t even blink for once while she told him about her just ended time at MIT and the job at Queen Consolidated she had applied for. He also did the finger rubbing again, obviously just now getting around to realize how smart she was.

The whole day had been great and according to Oliver it was only getting better when they were going to watch The Godfather which seemed to be his all time favorite movie.

“Are you sure it’s okay we’re here?” Felicity whispered when they entered the hall of the mansion, tiptoeing right behind him like she needed to hide her presence. After her last encounter with Moira and Oliver’s kind of faked ‘I love you’ at the night of Slade’s attack it felt strange being back here.

“Felicity, I live here” Oliver laughed, tugging at her hand to make her move away from the door. “Besides, there’s probably nobody here. My parents are having some crazy let’s-grow-all-closer-to-each-other-again-and-be-a-normal-family-trip. They actually agreed to go to marriage counseling and-“

“Oliver.”

Felicity almost winced at the sound of Moira Queen’s voice. No matter how soft her voice actually was, Felicity just couldn’t forget the cold tone of her voice when she had told her that Oliver was going to hate her if she told him who Thea’s father was. A cold shiver ran down her spine just thinking about it.

Moira approached them and Felicity subconsciously stepped a little closer to Oliver. His hand closed around hers in a supportive gesture that didn’t stay unnoticed by his mother whose eyes glanced at their joined hands before looking at Felicity again.

“Do you really think today is a good day to bring any friends here?” Moira asked seriously, throwing Felicity a short gaze, probably assuming that she had to be one of his affairs. “A close friend of our family just died and there are a lot of things we have to do now. Actually your father and I invited a few friends to talk about how we are going to pay Malcolm the last respect.”

“And that is why we are getting out of your way right now and-“

Oliver had already started walking backwards towards the stairs when his father entered the hall, followed by a young and unbelievable innocent looking Thea.

“Oliver, don’t you want to introduce us to your friend?” Robert asked, smiling at Felicity and reaching out his hand for her already. “Hi, I’m Robert Queen, Oliver’s father.”

“Felicity Smoak” she answered. “I’m a friend.”

“Hopefully the one who told my son off” Robert smiled.

“Yes, she is the one who has done that. Now you’ve all met her and we are going upstairs. Bye”, Oliver hurried to say, tugging at her hand once again to make her move to the stairs.

“I want to come with you” Thea said.

“We are watching a movie for adults and-“

“We can watch something else” Felicity suggested, making Thea smile happily while Oliver looked kind of annoyed. “I mean… the movie’s not going to run away, right?”

“I think it’s a nice idea to take a little care of your sister” Moira agreed.

Oliver sighed and nodded. “Okay, come on, Speedy. Let’s go.”

As the three of them went upstairs Felicity saw Moira moving closer to her husband, whispering something she couldn’t quite understand, but Robert’s answer sounded like something similar to: “After tonight it’s all over and we will all be safe.”

She could be wrong, but that was what she believed to hear, probably just wishful thinking.

“Hey, are you listening?” Oliver asked, calling her attention.

“What?” Felicity asked back, looking at him with wide eyes. “Sorry, I was…” She gestured with her hands at her head “in thoughts.”

“Everything alright?” he asked and she nodded hastily so he dropped his worries. “Thea suggested we should watch E.T. if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure” Felicity answered with a smile.

“Hey, Speedy, you go and get the movie. Felicity and I will wait in my bedroom” Oliver said, waiting for his sister to disappear before he opened the door to his room. “You know, you didn’t have to invite her. You said you want to take things slow and I accept that. I know you have no reason to, but I promise you that you can trust me.”

“I just wanted to be nice to her” Felicity replied. “I do trust you.”

She just didn’t trust herself around him, she added wordlessly, sliding her hand down his forearm as she stepped into his bedroom. Being close to and alone with him could make her do things she was going to regret later, like attacking him with her lips and body, making him a helpless victim to the desire of connecting their bodies and souls with one another’s.

“Make yourself feel comfortable” he invited her, gesturing towards the couch in front of his TV.

Instead of sitting down on the couch Felicity walked through the room, looking around and stopping at the window. She looked down to the forecourt of the mansion where several cars had arrived now.

Felicity bit her tongue. She needed to be downstairs and figure out what was going on there. The League had killed Merlyn just like they had said they would. They had kept their promise of getting Starling City rid of him very soon. But killing Merlyn had always been just part of the plan. It had been the first and most important step, but there were still the other people who could make the Undertaking happen. Felicity needed to know if the League had threatened them.

Considering what she believed Robert had told Moira they had at least threatened them, but Felicity still wasn’t convinced that he had really said what she thought she had heard. She needed proof. She needed someone to say that all plans regarding the Undertaking were put off. That it wasn’t going to happen.

“You need anything? A drink? Something to eat?” Oliver asked, right in time.

“I wouldn’t mind some water” she said. “How about I go get us some? You don’t think your mother will mind if I just go into the kitchen, right?”

“I’m sure she won’t even realize it” Oliver answered and explained her where the kitchen was before he cocked his head. “But are you sure you want to go? I can get it. The house is pretty big and you might get lost along the way.”

Felicity laughed, hoping her nervousness wasn’t too audible. She needed to get downstairs alone and undisturbed.

“How about I will try and find the way and if I’m not back in say… fifteen minutes you come and get me?”

“That seems acceptable” he nodded.

Felicity kissed his cheek shortly before she hurried outside, almost running into Thea who asked if she was leaving already, but was cut short by her brother, telling her to just come in and get that movie to show while Felicity was gonna get them drinks.

As Felicity hurried downstairs, she quietly wondered why Oliver hadn’t been suspicious about her suggestion to let her get the drinks. It would have been way more logical if Thea or Oliver had gone since they knew the house while Felicity was a total stranger here and to them, too. It led Felicity to the only possible conclusion that Oliver seemed to trust her. He hadn’t been skeptical because he trusted her.

The thought warmed her heart and while she hurried through the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of water and glasses, she tried not to think too much about how sneaking around here was kind of betraying his trust.

She headed left – instead of right like Oliver had told her – when she left the kitchen, finding herself back in the hall. She sneaked upstairs, crouching down on the topmost step and listened carefully to the voices coming from the living room behind the closed door.

“…one of us. We were the only ones who knew about the Undertaking” a foreign voice said. “So one of us is probably responsible for Malcolm’s death and the threatening of our family’s so-“

“You don’t really want to blame one of us, right?” another voice said. “It could have been- Where are you going?”

Felicity hid behind the newel as the door to the living room was opened and a man with red face stormed out, obviously not just leaving the mansion, but the group of people and what they had worked for behind.

A tangle of different voices was heard and Felicity could only understand parts of what they were saying, although she tried to listen closely from where she was still crouched down at the top of the stairs.

“…started this as friends, but looks like someone betrayed us and…”

“…mistake to sign up for any of this!”

“…right. This has all gone too far…”

“…have children and I don’t want them threatened or even…”

“…wanted to reduce the criminality, not become mass murderers or targets…”

There were other things said, but they all were followed by people storming through the hall and leaving the mansion in anger.

Felicity had never taken the factor of trust and friendship in consideration for all of this. She had thought that if there was something stopping them from moving along the plans of the Undertaking that it would be the League’s threats in addition to Merlyn’s brutal death.

But fact was that someone outside of that inner circle knowing about the Undertaking had caused them to mistrust each other because someone else than them knowing had to mean that someone had talked to someone else about it. They probably knew – or rather had known – Merlyn well enough to know that he would protect the plans for the Undertaking with the best security system there was available. And he had. Felicity would never have been able to work through it if she hadn’t seen technology of the future. So it should have been impossible for anyone outside of them to get these information.

It all led back to the only conclusion possible for them: someone from the inside must have talked and something like this when involved in something like the Undertaking was easily going to send you into prison or making even worse things happen to you, considering what had happened to Merlyn which was why-

“Felicity, what are you doing there?”

Felicity winced at the sound of Oliver’s words and almost let the bottle and glasses drop to the floor, but managed to tighten her hold around them before it could happen. She hastily got up from the floor and turned around to see Oliver grin at her in amusement, obviously not knowing that she had overheard his parents and their friends or rather former friends.

“I… got lost” she said hesitatingly, feeling heat raise into her face, probably turning her cheeks pink. “And then I tried to find your room on my own, but I only got lost even more and somehow I found the way back to the hall and thought I was just going to sit down and wait for you to come and find me.”

“Smart decision.”

“I am a smart girl.”

“Oh, I have realized that by now” Oliver laughed, taking the bottle and the glasses out of her hands before leading her back into his room where Thea had already set up the DVD and had sat down in front of the TV, only waiting for them.

Felicity and Oliver sat down on the couch together, Felicity leaning away from Oliver her feet resting right beside his thigh until he put them into his lap, softly massaging them while the first scenes of the movie were shown. Felicity had to subdue a moan of comfortableness as the soft pressure his thumbs were imposing on the soles of her feet.

After a while she suddenly felt all the tiredness and exhaustion – physical and mental – crushing down on her. The little sleep and the plenty stress she had had was now running through her body, not only making her feel tired and powerless, but also sore. Every limb of her body hurt even worse than after the League had drugged her. The only thing that was soothing her pain were Oliver’s warm hands on her feet.

She felt herself drifting off to sleep, her body becoming almost numb, but her mind was still awake, her thoughts chasing after one another, increasing her headache even in her half-sedated state.

She had done it. She had saved Oliver from the island and everything that would have happened to him in the aftermath. Oliver was safe and despite her doubts and fears she was still close to him, he was still very similar to her Oliver.

Deep down Felicity knew that she had to stop comparing him to the Oliver she had loved before her time travel, but she didn’t know this Oliver well enough to fully give up on that other Oliver. Part of her also realized that her thoughts were only becoming more and more clouded as her tiredness increased.

At least most of her thoughts were crazed. The thoughts at the back of her mind weren’t that much though. Felicity had put all her energy and focus on saving Robert, Sara and especially Oliver and preventing the Undertaking that she hadn’t even spent one serious thought on all the other people she could save, she probably had to save because there wasn’t anyone else who could.

Yao Fei and Shado were still on that island, together with a not so hateful Slade Wilson who right now was still a good man with a good heart. There still was that deadly Bio Weapon that was going to kill Tatsu’s and Maseo’s child, Tatsu had told her about that. And those were just some of the people’s whose destinies had a close connection to Oliver’s former path.

Felicity was certain that there were a lot of other people that needed saving, her saving to be exact. As soon as she was going to wake from her urgently needed sleep, she was going to bring back to her mind whose life had changed to the worst thinkable. She was going to remember who needed to be saved by her. And so she was going to create her own list to work off. She was going to-

“Did she fall asleep?” Thea’s voice broke through her thoughts.

“Looks like it” Oliver whispered. “She was exhausted all day. She needs the rest.”

“You have a crush on her, don’t you?”

Even though Felicity was more than half asleep already, she felt her heartbeat fastening at Thea’s words.

“I do” Oliver sighed. “And I feel like this could grow to so much more than just a crush.”

Felicity heard Thea say something more, but the words became a blur as her mind traveled back to what she had to do next.

She had to find a plan. Working off the list she was going to create was going to be her penance for asking Ra’s al Ghul to kill Malcolm Merlyn. It was going to be her way of trying to save not only people whose destiny was about to destroy them, but the part of herself she had killed by coalesce with the Demon.

She wasn’t going to let the darkness of that one act consume her. She was going to work on saving people as hard as possible with her knowledge of the future as her strongest weapon and the love she was hopefully find in Oliver again as her greatest strength.

Yes, Felicity was going to save people.

She was going to find a way.

Just like Oliver had always tried to.


End file.
